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7:30: A line stretches around the block as I arrive. I feel like an allstar getting me and my roommate around the line.

8:00: A quick chat with the guys from FPA reveals that tonight’s theme is “Worst Ever!” The Simpson’s Comic Book Guy would be proud.

8:15: The crowd is as wicked as ever. And they are still trickling in so the staff holds off the start a little longer.

8:25: Announcements galore. The most important of which is that the host tonight is Beth Nixon, who hosts a class in suitcase puppetry. So look out for that. Also, the winner tonight, as every month, will be asked to participate in the Grand Slam at the Painted Bride in November.

8:30: The mic is handed off to Beth who begins her hosting duties with great diligence. Beth dives right in, picking the judges from a large red bucket. She then reviews the rules, emphasizing truth, brevity, theme and spontaneity (aka no notes).

8:35: The slam begins with the test round. Juliet Wade takes the stage so the judges can assimilate themselves with judging duties. Juliet begins with a story about her fear of ghosts as a child. To this day, she believes her city house is haunted because her friends can sense ghosts. And she can sense ghosts. So sometimes, she says, she can feel the ghosts sleeping on top of her so her boyfriend was scared out of his mind by this. So she hired ghost hunters and they told her that you have to tell the ghosts to move on. But she feels like she shouldn’t tell the ghosts to move on because they have hung around through some strange goings on in her strange house. So she let it go. Until her roommate saw the ghost and the ghost was her. I am guessing this is a sleepwalking story. Very strange but well told. Funny!

8:43: Didn’t catch this girl’s name but hilarious story about little boys in the neighborhood in Texas. Funny southern chick with a foul mouth and some hilarious country children’s stories about memories and lost love and how it never works out. It gets funnier and then more intense until she is almost crying. We are talking 20 words a second. There is no way I can keep up with this. There is not a dry eye in the house. This is amazing. They don’t pay me enough to type this fast. If there was ever a better reason to attend the slam, I have not seen it. Unbelievable. Full of beautiful imagery and emotion. Sorry I couldn’t give you more of it. There was the guy who she fell in love with and then he robbed her house. She got emotional towards the end. It was powerful. Anyway, good work.

8:51: This host is not great with giving storytellers names. But this bearded hipster is not happy about having to follow the next presenter. He begins a story about moving in with his girlfriend and painting his living room. So he botched the notes, measuring the living room, and went in and asked for 6,000 square feet. And Joe at the paint store doesn’t bat an eyelash, he says “that’s probably right.” He thinks that can’t be right. But he trusts Joe. So Joe furthers the swindle by offering all the rollers and brushes for $300 because the total for the paint was to be $400 at least. This guy is clearly not very smart that he is allowing Joe at the paint store rip him off like this. It just gets worse and worse until he sees the paint on a hand truck coming out and fills his car full to the gills with way too much paint. And when he hits the parkway, he realizes he is an idiot. He then offers to sell the audience some paint. Nice work.

8:57: I am terrible with the names tonight. This lady is older. In her 50′s or so. She tells the crowd that the Story Slam was on her bucket list. She begins to talk about her 15-year-old years, how she was babysitting to earn enough for a mohair sweater that she thought would make her more comfortable. Apparently, her father was quite abusive but she wanted to show her father but he was the type of man that would tell her after the beauty parlor that “you can’t polish a turd.” Nice. So she brings it home and to her surprise, her father wants to see it. He tells her that she looks like a sack of potatoes. Double nice. But then, she went to camp. She didn’t know anyone, but she took the sweater, which she totally loves because she saved for it. But once she got to the bunk, she realized that the other girls had stacks and stacks of the same sweater. Tear. But Roberta, as I found out her name later, finished on a positive note, saying that she loved her life thus far. So if that was the worst that could happen, she was ok with it. Roberta is adorable and everyone loves her.

9:04: Donald Carter takes the stage to tell the last story before the intermission. I am back on track with the names. I apologize for all the ones I missed. Donald looks like an old blues man in a Hawaiian shirt. Donald says his worst ever lasted 5 years. And it wasn’t for anything glamorous like major drug sales. Apparently he did something to a woman and the fact that he was flamingly gay had something to do with it. He is a telling stories about druggy dance floors going to prison. In the beginning, the guards revered him for his Master’s degree. The prison was in Dallas, PA on top of a mountain, like (does mock banjo theme) Pennsylvania. Really funny voice, you have to see Donald to believe him. But worse than the inmates threatening him and aggressively pursuing him sexually was his father not speaking to him. But when he left prison, his father acted like those years had never happened. Donald gets wonderful scores, the best of the night.

9:12: Ed Shuttles went to Montclair University to visit friends. But the wicked night out came up short because they would have to crash in a tiny dorm room. Apparently, there was an air mattress on the floor and his buddy coyly says he is going to share the bed with the girl. He hears his buddy and the girl goin at it. So he is disgusted at first, then he ponders joining in. But he can’t bring himself to do it. So they finish up and it’s a gross commotion. Basically he had to sleep in a tiny dorm room while his buddy got some lovin’.

9:48: And we’re back. Our host, Beth Nixon says she is telling a quick story that is quite graphic. You have been warned. She decided to go to Nepal to be a teacher without speaking Nepalese. She has no idea why and probably should have regretted it but she did it. Her language barrier didn’t help when she got greatly sick from the food. She was laying in a bed which looked out onto a burning pile of plastic garbage, not a nice sight out her window. Not a nice view or a nice smell for someone with severe stomach pains. So she was back and forth from the dirty toilet with phone book pages to wipe and clean. So she finally asked for a bucket and was given one with pickeled eggs in it. So she was vomiting into a pickled egg bucket which she was then pouring out onto the plastic pile. And as she puked into a pickeled egg bucket, pouring the remains out the window, listening to the children banging on the door and she knew this was the worst moment of her life. But the perspective is that now she is waiting in traffic, she can think of that and feel alright.

9:54: Sam Melissa is an intern at the Constitution Center when it opened. He was a slave basically, until July 3rd when the piece of marketing genius that was the Red White And Blue To-Do, haha. So Sam had to secure the barricade for the fire team who were all shirtless and scary and weeping. Apparently, a friend had died earlier that day. Rosco was his name and they were pretty broken up about it. So then he tries to get the laborers to work but they won’t so he has to get the teamsters to do it. But they can’t move the barricades because they are supposed to be on break so Sam has to go and beg the site boss to do it. So he is scary but it finally happens. So he sleeps for 40 minutes. So then there is supposed to be a live painting with some real people acting out the Constitution painting. So Sandra Day O’Conner is supposed to open the Constitution Center but no one secured the stage frame so when she pulled the curtain, the frame falls down and the airforce flyby goes over, scaring the hell out of everyone. So Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner screams into the microphone “We’re all gonna die!” Then his bosses boss comes up to him and asks him if he would like a Quelude. Then he refuses and she asks him if he wants half a quelude. Wow. This is one of the best stories I have ever heard. Extremely excellent on all fronts. But there has to be a question of the truth. And Sam well exceeded the time limit. But if that story is true, that is one of the best stories I have ever heard.

10:04: Didn’t catch this girl’s name either but she met Rob at a party and on their second date, they went to a movie. They are standing in line and she takes out her wallet because she doesn’t want to be rude. But he makes her pay. Off to a bad start. Then they go to a restaurant and Rob gets dinner even after she is ordering an appetizer. So she is done with this guy and she is trying to figure out what will turn him off. So she orders a big slice of chocolate cake because he is a big muscle guy. He orders the chicken but there is not enough chicken and he is all pissed. Terrible date but they already got the movie tickets. So they go and its terrible but they come back and he wants to use the bathroom, even though she is trying to reject him. He is all mad. He pees all over the toilet seat. But then he calls her saying he is lost so she now believes karma exists. Tough spot in the order.

10:21: Lauren Ward is taking a night bus from Pittsburgh and falls asleep and wakes up to find her seat mate fondling and making out with her. So instead of waking the other passengers, freaking out or hitting the guy, she tries to talk to him. She finds out that he doesn’t speak a lot of English and pretends like he doesn’t understand that he shouldn’t do this. And he is still trying. So instead of doing pantomime, she starts to cry. And when she tells it now, she says she actually feels bad for the guy. Weird Stockholm Syndrome stuff right here. Good presentation though.

10:26: Kelly Kamph joined Match.com and was naïve, falling for a British guy named Marc mainly because he had a British accent. She was totally enamored. He was shorter than her, first of all, and with terrible breath. But maybe they can still be friends. So when they get to the bar, she orders her drink for him. So she asks why he did that and he puts his hand up. So he pulls out a gift bag from Dulce and Gabana. He opens it and it is a silver choker and says “my darling, this will be your first collar.” Kelly graciously accepted, totally terrified. But they went to dinner, he ordered for her again. And so she asks again why. And he says “I want a full time submissive.” He was a dungeon master for 13 years and came to America to cane women. No joke. When he scooted past to go to the bathroom and bail, he pulls her in for a kiss. As she pulled away, he spanked her ass so hard, it brought tears to her eyes. So she left and when she told the story to her mother, her mother asked if she could keep the choker. Excellent story Kelly. And that is the end of the real, for competition stories. Ingrid, a former slam winner takes the stage for the final story of the night.

10:32: Ingrid is doing her first confession at St. John Bosco. Ingrid is terrified while the other kids are playing horses around the church. She tells the crowd how a Catholic confession is supposed to go. But when she goes in, the priest is there and its Father Matt, her mother’s drinking buddy. She is mortified. How is she going to tell Father Matt her deepest, darkest secrets. So he is pushing her to get on with it, “leading the witness” as she puts it. She starts to cry, and there are no tissues in first confession. So her confession is that she used to get naked with her friend and “kiss thingys” and her father has Penthouse under the bed so she knows what that means. So she finally gets it out and says “I’m a homo” and he mishears her, thinks she said hobo. So she is crying, trying to say it again and again so he can get it but he doesn’t hear what she wants him to hear. So he tells her to do the dishes two nights in a row and send in the next sinner. Nice work, Ingrid.

10:38: They pull the raffle. Someone wins. Everyone cheers.

10:40: The big moment comes to select a winner. Sam Melissa takes it with his Constitution Center debacle. Sam, excellent story, really. And make sure you come and check it out next time. We give a hand to the judges and that concludes it. The next theme will be Belonging. See you next time.